They tuck you up

I don't have as many regrets as I deserve. A few things make me very sad - the look on someone's face when I have said something hurtful. Laughing during the attempt by an elderly technician to teach us the technique of making egg tempera as a medium. I was not laughing at him, it was just the incongruity of seeing him crack a fresh egg into a bowl in his little hut of painter's materials. I was asked to leave and had to teach myself, years later.

Like it or not, we are all the products of our upbringing. That is not to say we should carry on blaming our parents for all our less noble foibles right into old age, but we should at least be aware of them and - hopefully - adjust our behaviour toward others before we eventually kick the bucket. I think that is what the Last Rites must be for, if we never took the trouble to improve ourselves when we had the chance.

Words, like arrows, cannot be recalled. People in the public eye are - or should be - acutely aware of this. Whole careers have been destroyed by one thoughtless comment. Up until recently there was no such thing as an impetuous politician and - also up until recently - diplomats did not write kiss and tell memoirs. 

My mother spoke her mind. If she met a fat person, she was quite capable of suggesting they lose weight. When she became familiar with the man her eldest daughter eventually married, she helpfully alerted him to the fact that he was Jewish. He knew he was, but having been left by his parents (who fled to London) in an Austrian monastery for the whole of the war, he was reluctant to admit it in post-war England. From early childhood he had been trained to deny it for his own safety.

One day at the Austrian monastery, all the boys were lined up on parade for an inspection by a visiting SS officer. The nazi slowly walked up the line of boys and stopped when he came to my brother in law, who was beside himself with fear. 

After a moment, the officer said, "What's a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a Christian monastery?"

For weeks after, he expected another visit from the SS, but it never happened. This was either a little touch of humanity in a very cruel world, or the officer had been side-tracked by other events. 

He was eventually reunited with his parents as a teenager and found a job in the haberdashery department of a large London store before moving to our home town and meeting my sister. I was about 13 when I first met him. I found him very unworldly and - little shit that I was - let him know it.

When he told me the story about the SS officer and when I met his elderly parents, my understanding of his traits and foibles suddenly became clear. I hope he is as understanding about mine.